


A Whole and Dangerous Heart

by little_murmaider



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: A Boy and His Wolves, AU: Skwisgaar Was Raised by Wolves, Fairytale elements, Fatherklok Coda, Fic Giveaway, Gen, Most of these Wolf Facts are accurate, Pre-Klok, Pre-Series, We pride ourselves on the accuracy of our Wolf Facts round these parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 16:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_murmaider/pseuds/little_murmaider
Summary: In the cold and lonely hills of Sweden, a legend takes shape.





	A Whole and Dangerous Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Evakakko](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Evakakko).



> This is the prize for Evakakko on Tumblr, who won my Fic Giveaway! Hell yeah!

In his brief time on Earth, Skwisgaar imagined many ways he would die. Crushed beneath a log knocked loose from the bed of a lumberyard trunk. Slashed in half by a mysterious and ferocious beast. Thrown down a flight of stairs by one of his mother’s nameless, jealous suitors. He wanted his death to be transcendent, a bold _exclamation point_ on an unwitting and unremarkable life. He did not want to die as he lived. Quiet. Anonymous. Alone.  
  
But it seemed that was the death that awaited him.  
  
He had tumbled into an underground cavern to escape a pack of ravenous wolves, but now it was the cavern he could not escape. He wandered, aimless and afraid, for a long time. Sunlight was scarce; dusk cast its dark veil overhead, illuminating the ice in a purple glow. The cavern was a labyrinth. Every path lead not to an exit, but back to the sacred altar, back to monstrous, ancient stone warrior who, in his massive outstretched hand, held his prize. The guitar, he believed, in the moment, was his reward for being lonely and careless. When he’d taken the instrument in his hands, his little body was pulverized by a euphoric sense of purpose. His existence wasn’t meaningless. He had been put on this planet to do _something,_ and it was _this_. To own this guitar. To play. To _live_.  
  
But as he looped back to the altar for the seventh time, he didn’t feel any of that. He felt sad. And tired.  
  
The warrior loomed above, shadows enveloping him. He slumped at the altar’s steps. Laid down. Breath plumed before him. Grip on the guitar weakened. He blinked, the effort tremendous. The skeletal husk before him was too grim, too pitiful to view, so he closed his eyes. Despite the cold, he burned, his bones like hot irons. He felt compelled to shuck his clothes to cool himself, but did not. Sleepiness sunk its teeth into him. He needed to rest. Just for a little while. Just until his mom found him. She was looking. She _had_ to be looking. He’d been gone so long. Cottony silence stuffed his ears, and for a while, the only thing he heard was the distant whistle of the wind, and the dim, hopeful thump of his heart.  
  
But then he heard something else. The skitter of claws on ice; low, inquisitive groans. Skwisgaar opened his eyes a crack, the most he could manage, and he saw them. The wolves. At least a dozen encircled him. Up close they were massive, majestic, white as snow drifts. They stood like sentinels as their leader approached, curious but circumspect. She moved with the grace of water, fur of her back undulating with each step. Drawing up close, she bowed her head to better see him. Her snout shimmering with fresh blood. She did not snarl. Did not even bare her teeth. She nosed through his hair, tilted her forehead into his, and heated his face with a calming exhale.  
  
In his last pulse of consciousness, his head swam with soupy gratitude, that this wolf would accept him into the warm embrace of her stomach.  
  
When he awoke, he thought it strange the wolf’s insides looked so much like his bedroom. Then, a second thought: This _was_ his bedroom. He laid in his own bed, in fresh, dry clothes, swaddled in quilts. His mouth was gummy from thirst, the back of his neck smattered with sweat. A golden crescent sliced through the space between the base of his door and the floorboards. From downstairs he heard the scolding rumble of a man’s voice, then the placating lilt of his mother, speaking with the affect she used when she apologized for something she did not think required apology.   
  
The front door slammed, the steps creaking as his mother lightly ascended. Skwisgaar’s room flooded with light, and he squeezed his eyes shut before his mother entered. She slide carefully to his bedside, and lingered. His skin sparked in the places he ached for her touch. His forehead. His cheek. His lips. His neck.   
  
She sighed, the sound rising from a deep and impenetrable part of her, and tossed a still-folded blanket over his feet. She idled a moment more, then slipped back into the hall, darkness falling across the backs of his eyelids. A knot the size of a peach coalesced at the base of his throat. All of it, the cavern and the altar and the wolves and the wish his mother would see him as anything but an inconvenience, was but a strange, wonderful dream.  
  
And he would have believed that for the rest of his life had he not rolled over and seen the guitar leaning against his bedpost, the neck pocked with the indents of teeth.    

  
***

  
“Dis one ams called an _A_ , and dis one ams an _E_ , and _dis_ ones ams a _G_ .” He coiled his fingers clumsily around the fret board. “Dat ones ams hard for mes. My guitar teacher says it’s cause I gots stupid fats fingers, buts I’ll gets it once dey lose some weights.”  
  
He sat hunched on a stump outside the den, tongue poking between his lips as he plucked at his instrument. She sat opposite him, paws folded neatly over each other, a rapt and attentive audience. Spring carpeted the landscape in lush greens and yellows and pinks. Sprays of moss coated the surrounding trees, a passing breeze shaking loose the rainwater pooled in the canopy above after yesterday’s downpour. In the field below, the pups tumbled over one another, their coats dark with mud. They were the youngest of the pack, and had grown gangly and awkward, just as Skwisgaar had. But unlike Skwisgaar, in a matter of months they would be fully-grown, swift, sleek, able to grab their own destinies by the throat. Able to leave.  
  
It was on his fifth visit to the pack when he realized their numbers had thinned. Though she and some of the elder ones remained, many of the younger ones had vanished. Because she could not give him the answer as to why, he found it in his school’s library during lunch period. After two years, wolves were mature enough to strike out on their own to start new packs, their _own_ packs. Some stayed, forwent mating, remained rooted to the place they were born. But most left.  
  
She stuck close to him during her next pregnancy, as though she had sniffed out the wanderlust running hot through his veins. She knew, instinctively, he was not long for this place. He was predestined for more. Bigger things. Better things. World-changing things.  
  
But 12 was too young for world conquest. So he stayed. For now.  
  
“I’m writings a songs, did I tells you dats?”  
  
She blinked.  
  
“I gots most of de musicks finished, I t’inks it’s pretty goods?” He beamed. “Whens I’m dones wif it you’ll bes de first ones I plays it fors, ja?”  
  
She made a grumbling noise of protest without opening her mouth.  
  
“Buts it nots dones yets!”  
  
She uncrossed her legs and stood, chuffing with indignation. Skwisgaar rolled his eyes.  
  
“ _Okays_ okays, I plays it nows.” He moved his hands into position, but hesitated, gaze flitting up nervously. He worried at his lower lip. “Maybes I shouldn’ts…”  
  
Rainwater splattered her pelt and she shook out before trotting to him. Nipping at his the sleeve of his sweater, she groaned, impatient.  
  
“I’m doseing it! Sheesh! I’ll plays a little bits. But like I says, I’m nots done.”  
  
She plopped down, twitched her ears, and waited. Skwisgaar took a breath. And started to play.  
  
It took him a beat to find a rhythm. This was his first time playing for an audience whose express purpose was not to judge him. But he built confidence as he built up speed. The song started to feel more natural, as though it were not something he composed, but an extension of his very being. The music of his soul.  
  
As he reached the song’s climax, his solo became a duet. She tipped her head back and from her soared a high, melodic howl. The pups, who had ceased their play, joined with their own meek calls. Skwisgaar was fast approaching the part of the song he had not yet written, but he kept going, playing without thought, heart ballooned against his ribcage. He closed his eyes. Submerged himself in the symphony.

  
***

  
He hitched a ride home from a gig in Uppsala, drumming his fingers anxiously on the torn-up center console. Restlessness was his constant companion. The music he longed to create was locked within him, his hands unable to replicate the exact sound in his mind. Worse, he could not find anyone who played on his level. He outclassed everyone in music school; the pieces they made him play were boring and soft. He wanted something _heavy_ , something _dark_ , something _intense_. To get his fix he leapfrogged between metal bands of all genres, lying about his age, sometimes playing with three different groups in single night. They were all pathetic, producing thrashing, indiscriminate walls of sound. But he wasn’t in a position to turn down paid work, especially since his mother had been jobless for the better part of the year. So he took the gigs. Played the shows. Seethed with frustration. Hoped someday to find someone, _anyone_ with whom he could make the kind of music he wanted.  
  
His ride deposited him in the town square, unwilling to venture down the winding, unlit and unpaved backroads to his house. It was a two mile walk, and in the unlikely chance his mother was home, a screaming match awaited him there. The awnings of the darkened shopfronts rolled back into their coils. Starlight glimmered off the icy cobblestone streets. Skwisgaar filled his lungs with the blistering air and started in the direction of home.  
  
But the crunch of snow behind him gave him pause.  
  
“Lates night, Skwigelf?”  
  
He did not need to turn to know who it was. It was Hjalmar, his music school classmate, the neanderthalic thug who constantly attempted–and consistently failed–to strip Skwisgaar of his hard earned solos. Flanking him were his two brutish cronies, so inconsequential Skwisgaar did not even know their names.  
  
“Ifs yous lookings for you moms,” Hjalmar said, “I t’inks I saws her over ins de red lights district.”  
  
“Hueugh hueugh, cause she’s a whores,” grunted one of the lackies.  
  
“Fuck offs,” Skwisgaar mumbled, resuming his stride. The clodding thud of their footsteps trailed him.  
  
“Why you outs so lates, Skwigelf, eh? Dids you has a gig?”  
  
Skwisgaar’s grip on the handle of his guitar case tightened.  
  
“You _dids_ didn’ts yous! Mr. Sooperstars, over heres!”  
  
Skwisgaar picked up his pace, the case knocking into his thigh.  
  
“Dids you finally finds someones to listen to your _weirds_ garbage cans metal?”  
  
Skwisgaar scoffed. “Pffts. Like _you’d_ know _anyt’ings_ about peoples wanting to listen to yous.”  
  
“Peoples _wants_ to listen to mes!” Hjalmar said hysterically. “Buts dey _can’ts_ cause _yous_ am always hogging all de solos!”  
  
Skwisgaar knew he should have kept moving, that eventually the group would run out of steam and abandon him for other pursuits of delinquency. But as it so often did, his ego eclipsed his common sense. He glanced back over his shoulder, features molded into his best, smuggest sneer, and said, “Can’ts hog whats you was meant to haves.”  
  
The rush of satisfaction drained immediately. Hjalmar’s eyes blacked out like a shark smelling blood. His fat fingers curled into ham-sized fists.  
  
“You t’inks you’re so greats?” he snarled, white air snaking from his nostrils. “You t’inks you’re so _specials_?”  
  
Skwisgaar did not answer. He ran.  
  
Having never learned to fight, speed was his lone defense. But that night he’d snuck a few beers when the bartender wasn’t looking, and the malty weight of them made him sluggish. His head snapped back as Hjalmar yanked the ends of his shoulder-length hair, the force dislodging the case from his grasp. It sailed in a perfect arc and crashed hard to the ground, hard enough to shatter its cheap lock and fling the guitar unprotected into the snow. Skwisgaar moved to save it, but collapsed as Hjalmar drove his knee into the base of his spine. At once his lackies were on him, one kneeling on his back, the other holding down his arms.   
  
Hjalmar took a few steps back, cleared a patch of snow away with his boot, and crouched. Gritting his yellow teeth, he wrenched free a loose cobblestone. He tossed it up to test his weight, caught it, then turned to Skwisgaar, eyes flickering wicked and resolute.  
  
“Okays, Mr. Sooperstars,” he said, skulking toward him with menace. “Let’s see how specials you ams wif 10 brokens fingers.”  
  
The walls of Skwisgaar’s chest cavity were closing in. He wriggled and flailed but was weak, too weak to break free. Hjalmar advanced. He couldn’t lose his hands. Without the ability to create music, he had nothing. He _was_ nothing. He hoped against hope Hjalmar would miss, that the cobblestone would brain him in the skull. Because if he could not play guitar, he could not conceive one reason to live.  
  
Then, reason appeared.  
  
Her growl was unmistakable, her teeth shining, white, sharp. She was fury. She was powerful. She was hungry.  
  
From the darkness more materialized, stances lowered, snouts snitched with snarls. The cobblestone fell from Hjalmar’s hand, his ruddy face blanching. His sidekicks fell away, scampered to their feet. The three of them clutched at each other, whimpering, trembling messes. The pack hemmed them in. Now free, Skwisgaar rose.  
  
Everyone thought he was crazy, but for the rest of his life, Hjalmar swore that the eyes of those wolves glowed red as blood. And that when Skwisgaar joined them in their fold, his did, too.

  
***

The last place he wanted to be that night was home. He had made plans with one of his regular lays, but she canceled last minute. Something about needing to pick up her stepdaughter from rugby practice. Whatever. Didn’t matter. What mattered was he was without an alternative. What mattered was he was alone.  
  
His mother had taken a job in Gothenburg, short-term work. She was contracted stay out for three weeks but could make trips on her off days. She’d promised she would be back by that night, but he long stopped putting stock in her promises. He sat on the floor of his dim bedroom, fingers raw, having played until his blisters were on the verge of bursting. Without the distraction his stomach moaned for attention, his only meal for the day a single peach he consumed in tiny, bird-like bites. The funds his mother left him ran out, and he would sooner cut out his own appendix with a rusted spoon than dip into his personal savings. He had plans for that cash, plans that outranked his current needs. So he went without food. Went without company. Went without celebration. It would be worth it, later. It had to be.  
  
Just then, a scratch at his bedroom door, a whine, a headbutt, and her bright face peering through the crack. How she found her way into a locked house was unknown. She was clever and stubborn, and he no longer questioned how she applied those attributes to achieve repeated impossibilities.  
  
He didn’t conceal his excitement as she and the rest of the pack loped inside. The newest pups were bounding balls of fluff, bouncing into his lap in a torrent of affection. One of the older ones tugged in a blanket holding a wicker basket, laden in treats, jams, candies, cookies, beer. He did not question how she procured these, either. He did not envy the no doubt bewildered picnickers she swiped it from. Their loss was his gain.  
  
“It’s a party nows, huh?” He took a bite of a biscuit, then fed the rest to the preening pup nibbling on the heel of his hand. “You didn’ts has to comes heres, you knows.”  
  
She came to his side and laid her head on his shoulder, her body radiating warmth.      
  
“Stoppppps, you don’ts gots to does dat! I’m fines! Beside,” he unscrewed the cap of a beer bottle with his teeth and took a swig. “Borthdays ams a scam inventeds bys de dessert industries. So whats she miss its? I don’ts cares. I don’ts.”  
  
But looking into her piercing amber eyes he couldn’t lie, not even to himself, and it was not until he felt the rough, gentle lap of her tongue against his cheek did he know he was crying.

***

  
The time to leave arrived eventually. Skwisgaar’s time came six months after turning 18, after one final, fateful argument with his mother. It was done. He was _out_ of there. He had a plan, and the plan was good. Bus to Stockholm. Train to Copenhagen. Flight to America. Where in America? He didn’t know yet, planned to buy a ticket to whatever destination he could afford.  America was brimming with opportunity. America was far, far away from this place that had never truly been home to him, just a space he occupied for a time. America was going to give him the life he always wanted, the life he always deserved. All he had to go was get there, and get it.  
  
He’d been stewing in his own self-righteousness, so he did not notice the panic coursing through the bus stop, the scattered passengers scurrying for safety in the dead of night, until the stop was completely empty. He looked to the entrance. Stood up straighter. Dropped his bags to the ground.  
  
Because there she was.  
  
“Ohs,” he said, shame thinning his voice, “Hi.”  
  
She was before him in one graceful leap, taking his wrist in her mouth and closing, not hard enough to injure but enough to hurt. He yelped.  
  
“I knows _I knows_ I’m sorries!” She released, and he took a knee to meet her at eye level. “I shoulds have comes to says goodbye. Buts. I thoughts if I dids, I.” He ran his fingers through her soft white fur. “I mights not leaves.”  
  
She shifted so his hand covered more of her face. An upswell of emotion threatened to choke him.  
  
“Whens I t’inks about not seeing yous anymore, it.” He swallowed. “It’s too much. I can’ts does it.”  
  
She interrupted him with an obnoxious gag, crescendoing into a wheezing, staggering hack. This was how she fed the youngest pups, regurgitating nourishment from the deepest depths from her. Skwisgaar grimaced, deflated that she would disrupt his heartfelt sincerity by vomitting. Thankfully, digested deer meat was not what poured from her mouth. It was a black brick of a phone, slimy, all the buttons scratched off but the first, the number one. Skwisgaar lifted it gingerly, glancing with confusion between the device and her. He dialed _one_ .  
  
A muffled, cheerful jingle sounded from within her stomach.  
  
In a little while he would board that bus. In a little while he would see a rolling white mass sprinting along the horizon, mirroring the bus’s course. In a little while he would throw open the bus window and push himself half out of it, wind whipping his hair, and he would turn his face to the moon and howl and howl until his vocal chords gave out.  
  
But not yet. For now, he held her tight and fierce, leaned his forehead into hers, synchronized their heartbeats.  
  
“ _Jag älskar dig, mamma._ ”

 


End file.
